International News Covid-19 .....

[YellowTaxi]

So there were large numbers of avoidable excess deaths. Thanks for confirming.

"Don't politicise" appears to mean "don't hold those who make the decisions to account."

 

[QR]

"don't politicise" =\= "ignore"

Conflation conflation conflation.

'Don't politicise' = the 'go to' slogan of the politicians who do an appalling job

Edit:.. and those trying to excuse their actions.

 

[Eaststanding]

Yes lets just ignore it. How dare people politicise it? Johnson is a genius and it’s bad form to mention
that yesterday UK has recorded its highest ever daily number of coronavirus cases and the largest number of deaths since July 1

We should show proper respect for someone who went to Eton.

Anyone discussing the fact that thousands of people have died needlessly or that Johnson has wasted billions on corrupt deals is unpatriotic and trying to distract the board from the glorious sicccess of Brexit.

Of course no one should ignore any death, to do so would be disrespectful.
The exact number of COVID deaths in any country is up for debate, for various reasons, but whatever the figures are here, they’re too high, that is fact.
Theres a subtle difference between discussing and referencing the number of deaths in criticism of the Govt., and using the death toll as key political point scoring issue. I haven’t heard any politicians do the latter but it would be bang out of order if they did.

 

[ZeroTheHero]

I agree - I don't think politicians have been over-using the death figures in a political way, although of course they have been mentioned numerous times (how could they not be?).
They have been mentioned (more than once!) on here - mostly in response to claims that the government has 'been doing a good job' or similar, because they are the absolute barometer of the effectiveness of what has been done. If there is *one* job any government ought to be doing it is to protect the lives of it's citizens. I don't think you can say that this figure or that should not be quoted because it is 'political' - that is daft. If true, then we shouldn't quote the number of tests being done, the numbers in hospital, the effectiveness of the furlough scheme etc - because all of those are potentially 'political' (one way or another) as well.

 

[Essexyellows]

So there were large numbers of avoidable excess deaths. Thanks for confirming.

"Don't politicise" appears to mean "don't hold those who make the decisions to account."

Yes there were a large number of excess deaths, it is a global pandemic of a novel virus.......... or a "bit of sniffle" for many who catch it.

Whether those excess deaths were avoidable is a moot point really, a pandemic will by its very nature kill people.
Even the Care Home to Hospital transfers were a simple fix in the end but that could not happen fast enough relative to the rate of infection.

Patient A is in a care home, they might be Covid positive or not, but need medical/clinical intervention.
Patient A is transferred to hospital and potentially infects the other patients and/or staff on the ward or gets infected themselves.
Patient A gets treated and is ready to return, they might be Covid positive or not, so they either stay in the full hospital ward or return to infect the patients and/or staff in the care home.

What do we do with Patient A?

The priority is their wellbeing & appropriate care, and if that means the hospitals returned a ticking bomb to the care homes (and vice versa) then that is what happened.

The subsequent intervention (solution) is that Patient A has to have a negative test before being discharged back into primary care world.

However that takes time and resources to set up across large & complex organisations.

 

[YellowTaxi]

And yet places like Vietnam managed to have 35 deaths in total.

Johnson for ideological reasons refused to use the existing infrastructure, because it was more important to give his vote leave pals huge sums of money to devise apps that were useless rather than work alongside local authorities and hospitals.

Easy to see why Johnson fans want to make mentioning that "political'

 

[ZeroTheHero]

@EY

That's all well and good (and true) - but is *exactly* why people bring up the amount of deaths. Because that figure is way high compared to most other countries in terms of deaths per million, excess deaths over the expected seasonal average etc - and although an imperfect measure, it is really the only way to compare how our leaders have coped compared with others worldwide.

 

[bashamwonderland]

I agree - I don't think politicians have been over-using the death figures in a political way, although of course they have been mentioned numerous times (how could they not be?).
They have been mentioned (more than once!) on here - mostly in response to claims that the government has 'been doing a good job' or similar, because they are the absolute barometer of the effectiveness of what has been done. If there is *one* job any government ought to be doing it is to protect the lives of it's citizens. I don't think you can say that this figure or that should not be quoted because it is 'political' - that is daft. If true, then we shouldn't quote the number of tests being done, the numbers in hospital, the effectiveness of the furlough scheme etc - because all of those are potentially 'political' (one way or another) as well.

The point I was making was not that the numbers should not be cited, but that the number of deaths should not be politicised.

One example of how the deaths might properly be cited is if somebody said "I don't like how high our numbers are. I think they should come down and I believe the government's approach should be [X] because at the moment they aren't doing enough".

One example of how the deaths are being politicised is if somebody said "Boris Johnson doesn't even know how many kids he's got and he's killing the population" or something of that ilk. Cheap. Nasty.

One example serves a valuable purpose and allows for genuine criticism. The other example does nothing even close to that.

 

[bashamwonderland]

Of course no one should ignore any death, to do so would be disrespectful.
The exact number of COVID deaths in any country is up for debate, for various reasons, but whatever the figures are here, they’re too high, that is fact.
Theres a subtle difference between discussing and referencing the number of deaths in criticism of the Govt., and using the death toll as key political point scoring issue. I haven’t heard any politicians do the latter but it would be bang out of order if they did.

This is exactly right. Politicians are acting quite respectfully at the moment - a lesson that could be learned by one or two this forum!!

 

[Eaststanding]

I agree - I don't think politicians have been over-using the death figures in a political way, although of course they have been mentioned numerous times (how could they not be?).
They have been mentioned (more than once!) on here - mostly in response to claims that the government has 'been doing a good job' or similar, because they are the absolute barometer of the effectiveness of what has been done. If there is *one* job any government ought to be doing it is to protect the lives of it's citizens. I don't think you can say that this figure or that should not be quoted because it is 'political' - that is daft. If true, then we shouldn't quote the number of tests being done, the numbers in hospital, the effectiveness of the furlough scheme etc - because all of those are potentially 'political' (one way or another) as well.

Indeed. Use all the available information to inform and guide policies but put the right emphasis on the right stats to ensure, as far as possible, accuracy and clarity of message. Without doubt clarity had been lost at times but it would be wrong to solely use deaths as the number one indicator of success or not.

 

[YellowTaxi]

What do you mean by diusrespectful? A poster who is quite happy to repeat (entirely untrue) accusations about the proportion of paedophile cases in one sector of the community is suddenly concerned that noone should criticise the prime Minister for the atrocious job he's doing, or mentioning the statistical evidence showing that to be the case,.

 

[YellowTaxi]

great to see bashamwonderland standing up for poor little Boris Johnson scraping by because he has to buy his own food.

 

[bashamwonderland]

What do you mean by diusrespectful? A poster who is quite happy to repeat (entirely untrue) accusations about the proportion of paedophile cases in one sector of the community is suddenly concerned that noone should criticise the prime Minister for the atrocious job he's doing, or mentioning the statistical evidence showing that to be the case,.

If this was aimed at me - again you are conflating "ignore" and "don't politicise". These are really quite separate concepts and it's concerning that you can't differentiate between the two.

As for your point about paedophiles, if that was aimed at me I don't really understand what you're talking about.

 

[Whingit]

Boris and Dom love their behavioural scientists and, assuming they're not completely stupid, surely they could have foreseen the consequences of kicking people out of pubs at the same time and sending students to uni? Do they want people not to comply with the rules so they have scapegoats?

 

[ZeroTheHero]

Indeed. Use all the available information to inform and guide policies but put the right emphasis on the right stats to ensure, as far as possible, accuracy and clarity of message. Without doubt clarity had been lost at times but it would be wrong to solely use deaths as the number one indicator of success or not.

You had me nodding until the last sentence! There are of course other considerations (social and financial mostly), but (for me at least) the protection and well-being of the people of the country is, or should be, the over-riding consideration of those leading it. So while I concede it may not be 'solely' the number one indicator of how the govrrnment is performing, I do think it is by far the most important.

 

[bashamwonderland]

Boris and Dom love their behavioural scientists and, assuming they're not completely stupid, surely they could have foreseen the consequences of kicking people out of pubs at the same time and sending students to uni? Do they want people not to comply with the rules so they have scapegoats?

What would actually be clever was if this was all an early-autumn ploy to get all the young people to contract COVID. That way,by the time we all go back to see parents and grandparents at Xmas we are bringing less of it with us.

I don't suspect that's the case here, but it would be a smart move.

 

[Whingit]

What would actually be clever was if this was all an early-autumn ploy to get all the young people to contract COVID. That way,by the time we all go back to see parents and grandparents at Xmas we are bringing less of it with us.

I don't suspect that's the case here, but it would be a smart move.

I actually agree. Might have to start some kind of Covid party business like parents do to get their kids chickenpox.

 

[mooro]

Just a quick note on the number of deaths - and looking only at those countries that could be considered our closest peers in terms of size, location, etc - which I would include France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

First up, congratulations to Germany who have ridden this out so much better than the others.
After that however, while the UK figure is higher than the others, there are two elements that contributed to this that are not as significant as time moved on:
i) a lot of this came quite early on, which is probably largely down to the decisions made on far less information than we have about them now (returning patients to care homes and a possibly delay in lockdown).

ii) Our curve also had a much shallower tail from the peak than the others,

However, even with this slower decline, sharper spikes more recently in both Spain and France mean that the total number of COVID deaths in the UK since late June (27th) is lower (1471) than in both Spain (2210) and France (1513). With current trends, this tipping date may move even earlier.

It is also worth noting that in terms of death per capita(as 19Sep) , the UK figure of 614 is much lower than Spain (653) and only a fraction above Italy (591). As an aside, the US has now overtaken us on this measure too and continues to rise at pace whereas the European numbers have slowed (UK and Italy figure has only risen by 8 per million since the start of August.

 

[YellowTaxi]

After that however, while the UK figure is higher than the others, there are two elements that contributed to this that are not as significant as time moved on:
i) a lot of this came quite early on, which is probably largely down to the decisions made...

By the Prime Minister.

Amazing how much more criticism Jeremy Corbyn gets, despite not being Prime Minister for the decisions he might have taken, compared to Bors Johnson for the ones he actually did.

 

[Eaststanding]

You had me nodding until the last sentence! There are of course other considerations (social and financial mostly), but (for me at least) the protection and well-being of the people of the country is, or should be, the over-riding consideration of those leading it. So while I concede it may not be 'solely' the number one indicator of how the govrrnment is performing, I do think it is by far the most important.

@bashamwonderland broadly articulates what I didn’t have time to type, at 1041, above. Use the stats, publicise them, don’t use the death toll first and foremost as a stick to beat the Govt. with, this isn’t the U.S.